It is told that Frederick II, Holy Roman emperor, and King of Sicily in the 13th century wanted to find out what kinds of speech children would have when they grew up if no one spoke to them beforehand. He conducted an experiment whereby the children were fed and bathed, but the foster mothers were not to speak or play with them. The king labored in vain because the children all died.
Seven hundred years later, a whole series of studies of children raised in institutions without the loving words and joyful faces of mothers or foster mothers, confirmed the earlier results. Not all died, but they were slower to reach almost every significant milestone of child development and were vastly more prone to grow up with serious emotional problems.
Speaking in 1971, Dr. Peter Neubauer, Director of the Child Development Center in New York and a Task Force Chairman on Report of the Joint Commission on the Mental Health of Children during (late 1960s) said that just 25 years ago, when we talked about the importance of love and affection in the rearing of infants, we really weren’t able to itemize the ingredients of it. He said: “About all we used to say was that a mother should hold her baby while feeding him.” (I remember these times, do you?) Neubauer went on to say: now, we know that a child’s basis for emotional sturdiness is formed during early infancy. The love and affection he receives from a mother or mother-figure, most critically from birth to three, will determine the path of emotional development that will carry him through his life. LIFE Special Double Issue on Children. December 17, 1971
What's this got to do with families in need; with diapers?
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